Posts by Zippy's Sausage Factory 766 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2008
It reminds me of the Daleks, wandering around saying "victory is certain", then starting their bomb countdown from a ludicrous 6,000 and then just sitting around waiting for it, giving plenty of time for you know who to come and spoil their party. (The question of why they didn't just start the countdown from 10 is never explained...)
Which was invested by Louis le Prince in Leeds, I believe. (He later disappeared in mysterious circumstances).
Also, I'm sure I've read that one of the big reasons the movie industry is in Hollywood was to avoid New York where Edison had much more favourable patent courts.
I moved to Portugal recently too (in fact I was in that very branch of Cash Converters a couple of weeks ago).
Anyway, last October my keyboard died. Fortunately there's a Worten round the corner (think Dixons / PC World but with a red colour scheme) and I bought a new Portuguese keyboard for about 7€. Took me about a day to get used to a Portuguese layout and now British or US layouts annoy the heck out of me. First thing I do - change the layout! :)
Yes, the root cause of the 1930s Weimar Republic crash was undoubtedly the punitive WWI sanctions, but had they not decided on the clever wheeze of printing lots and lots of cash to buy their way out of trouble - and to be fair, it worked for a few months - everything would have been a lot less painful. (Interesting that we recently did a smaller version - quantitative easing.)
Also, I'm amazed you didn't mention the 1929 Wall Street crash - massively exacerbated by people buying "on the margin" (i.e. borrowing money to buy shares). Interesting that that problem has come up again as well.
In the long term, I don't expect they will continue to get the best people with a strategy like that - especially as the advice across the rest of the industry is "never take the first offer" (personally, I never have - ever.) It may work for 20 somethings who are attracted by the shiny CV fillip of having worked for Google and the likelihood that they can go double their money at MS or wherever...
I'm unlikely ever to work for Google, though, in much the same way as I'd be unlikely to work for any other organisation I don't trust.
It's classic MBA behaviour. This is exactly what they teach you to do on an MBA - and it's a reason why every MBA I've ever met seems to know how to measure everything, work out how much it costs but has no clue about strategic thinking or how to build a business, merely how to build a great big rut with minimal profit margin and then wonder why it doesn't last...
A bit sad that it went in favour of a bland, generic service that nobody will particularly enjoy - kinda sums up Apple's "innovations" these days.
The idea of the "Apple Music Connect" feature annoys me - er, don't want that, but not sure you can 100% turn it off. I have last.fm, why do I need another version of it that I didn't sign up to? Auto following artists you already bought from - that's just annoying.
Apple Music for me is a great sales tool - for Windows. Maybe Microsoft should use it as a sales pitch for Windows 10? "Guaranteed NOT to include Apple Music (unless you're stupid enough to install iTunes)"
If it's Direct Debit, complain to BACS.
I went to remortgage a few years ago and as soon as the existing mortgage provider knew I was moving they stopped collecting my direct debits and reporting me to Experian. I complained to BACS and explained what had happened - and significantly, when it had happened - and my mortgage vendor very quickly decided to change my credit file to say I'd made my three payments on time.
I complained again a few years later over council tax direct debits going AWOL - again, their cockup (this time they were collecting them, but not crediting them against our account). I was later told that BACS threatened them with losing the ability to take direct debits if they didn't sort it out...
Your little Windows Phone gets attached to the free Wifi in Starbucks. It gets infected with something nasty because Windows is the prime target for nasties, mainly because there's a lot of it about. Now that there's a unified code base for nasties, you just carried that to your corporate network.
And that's why I know some IT managers who've banned Windows Phone altogether.
As far as I can tell, if the UK leaves the EU, then the following scenario is pretty plausible:
1. Common Agricultural Policy no longer applies to the UK.
2. Lots of farmers lose their subsidies.
3. Lots of farmers who couldn't afford to supply the supermarkets without those subsidies go broke.
4. Food skyrockets in price.
5. Hyperinflation sets in. (Of course, if the UK had big gold reserves that wouldn't be such a problem...)
Give me another couple of hours I can think of a few more potential disaster scenarios, if you want them...
Not quite. This panel could heavily influence tax policies in the EU for the next few years, and it's likely that not turning up and playing nice could turn out to be a very serious mistake.
In US terms, it's perhaps the equivalent of being invited to a friendly discussion with a few Congressmen on a subcommittee. On the surface, perfectly ignorable. But behind the scenes, perhaps a lot more influential than you might think.
"We want the ability to not fine someone quarter of a million if they actually spend half a million beefing up their security and start taking it seriously, because otherwise management might decide that if they're going to get fined anyway and can't avoid the bad PR they might decide not to bother with better security"
That's how it reads to me. (And yeah, seems sensible)
You can bet the marketroids are going to want to use it.
And let's face it - "Lync" does sound a bit like a sexually transmitted disease. "I went down the doctors with a case of the lync yesterday" "What they give you, antibiotics gain?" "Yeah"
TTIP will be ratified everywhere except the USA. But they will expect the other sides to stick to it rigorously, while completely ignoring it themselves.
The Extradition Act surely should show that America makes bi-lateral agreements so that it can lean on the other side to implement them and then ignore them at its end.
Entering into any sort of trade agreement with the USA is basically equivalent to giving the US government sovereignty over part of your legislation with nothing in return. That's been their position for the last I don't know how long and I've no doubt they will stick to it.
Let's ban secure banking. Because that's going to pose no problems for anyone.
Seriously, this guy needs to be unemployed. Because he genuinely does not understand the nature of computer security. What he is suggesting would allow criminals carte blanche to steal, and there would be nothing EuroPol could do about it.
This statement proves that he is incapable of doing the job effectively. He shouldn't have this job - or any other job in law enforcement. Effective immediately. Career over. Welcome to the dole queue.
I like not being murdered by psychos who can register themselves on some weird app as a faux taxi driver. That's why I like licences for taxi drivers, as they provide at least some guarantee that you've not been picked up by some random serial killer.
I can understand Uber being an aggregator for taxis, like booking.com is for hotels. But a service like UberPOP? I'm not sure why anyone who isn't massively suicidal would use it...
If Office 2016 is anything like Visual Studio 2013 then there will be lots of screen space wasted with cloud nonsense you will never EVER use (do Microsoft make updates of Visual Studio often enough that I need a flag PERMANENTLY on screen to light up when they are? No, to be frank).
So it looks a bit more 2007ish and a little bit less Windows 3.1, but still boring, flat, plain, cheesy and outdated. Actually, reminds me more of Word 2.0c now - go figure.
And will they have fixed some of the UI inconsistencies? Unlikely. Will they have fixed the VBA problems in Excel? Doubtful. Will they have fixed the dreaded pagecount bug first discovered in Word 2 that is still open today? Almost certainly not.
So... why bother with MS Office any more? Really? All they do is make it look a bit different but don't bother fixing the things that stop you doing your job. Right now, Libre and Open Office look a better bet because I can actually get work done in them. I'd pay money for them, but I wouldn't even bother installing Office 2016 if you gave it to me.
I expect your FOI request will be denied on the grounds that information is already available. It should be in council budget minutes, and that's where they will redirect you.
Now, if you can't find the minutes of the budget minutes on their website, that's a different kettle of fish. That's the sort of thing you need to refer to someone with bite (ODPM? NAO? no idea who these days) because there is a serious proper legal duty to publish council minutes.
That will get you investment costs, anyway. TCO they probably don't know themselves...
I used to work in local government. Most people don't even know which of their local councils does what. We regularly used to get emails about the County Hall building - even though the county council had a totally different name from us, and a VERY big sign saying which council it belonged to.
As an aside, if 'ModernGov' is descended from APLAWS, then... no, I'm not going there. Let's leave that oen dead and buried.
Doesn't this just reflect the fact that Apple customers have money to spend - they're equivalent to the top end Android people, which is probably 20% of Android users but 80% of the Google Play revenue. Everyone else is on cheaper "landfill" Android and can't afford stuff.
(That said, I have both Apple and Android kit around and only ever paid for stuff on the Apple app store... hmm...)
If I recall correctly, SOPA would have done next to nothing to fix the Google landgrab issue. It would, however, have done a great deal towards making many more people criminals than currently are by making ripping CDs and DVDs illegal. Ripped all your CDs to iTunes? Oh that's a $2 million dollar fine and a thousand years in jail. Next criminal please...
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